My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a children’s cartoon based on the popular horse toys from the 1980s. While the cartoon has had several incarnations, the most recent generation is the first to have asubstantial adult following. It follows the adventures of 6 ponies navigating interpersonal relationships in their vast fantasy world of Equestria. The show focuses heavily on the lessons it teaches, basing many of its decision in educating a young audiences.
The series has a rather large cast of world conquering villains. To date there have been 12 major evildoers (major meaning they attempted to take over Equestria). Of those 12, 7 have ultimately been redeemed. While redemption (especially redemption of toyetic characters) isn’t uncommon in children’s media, it’s rare such despicable characters are given no punishment for unthinkable actions.
The seven redeemed villains Nightmare Moon, Discord, Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, The Pony of Shadows, Tempest Shadow, and Chancellor Neighsay all did objectively evil things, but while some of them have properly framed redemption arcs, several have their horrific acts swept under the rug in favor of a hasty atonement (More detailed explanation here). Because the target audience is comprised of mainly children, it is especially important to not impart damaging lessons, and in today’s world full of evil and unforgivable people the worst lesson a writer could possibly teach is misplaced forgiveness.
The three redemptions that work (and don’t teach utterly abysmal lessons), are those of Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Sunset Shimmer. All three of these characters face consequences for their actions, are framed with more fantastical elements, and show a logical progression in their moral philosophy.
The other four villains all fail not only as characters, but also as vehicles to deliver messages. With the exemption of Chancellor Neighsay, they are all worse versions of a successful counterpart. Starlight Glimmer is a worse version of Sunset Shimmer, the Pony of Shadows is a worse version of Discord, and Tempest is a worse version of Nightmare Moon.
All three of the good characters are forgiven based on the quality of their personal growth, and their willingness to change. It’s worth noting that all of them must learn what the show calls “Friendship Lessons”. Sunset can’t always control her temper, Nightmare Moon is tempted to abuse her power, and Discord still tries to manipulate other creatures, but they show tangible change with each appearance.
These three exemplify proper restitution in the face of poor decisions.The four poorly written characters all receive penance with no improvement. They are given forgiveness on the basis of their empty promises rather than their actions, and frequently relapse into harmful behavior, but receive no criticism or even get praised for objectively awful conduct. Starlight continues to use magic to hurt people. Tempest uses her new friends for power. Neighsay is still xenophobic, with only a tinge of remorse. The Pony of Shadows uses his new position to manipulate friendships. None of these characters changed. Without proper setup, motivation, and execution, these villains go against the primary objective of the show, teaching children.
These lessons in redemption are awful. They teach children to forgive without evidence for improvement, and allow for toxic ideology to run rampant in response to pathetic moralizing. Due to the large adult fanbase, and by extension a large group of online content creators, we can see the damaging ideas the show imparts.
In 2018 a “Brony Analyst”, ToonKriticy2k, was accused of grooming underaged girls for sex. The allegations were evidenced by years of screenshots and incriminating skype calls. Once all of the evidence was available to the public, While this is horrific, the surge of content creators gaslighting the victims, calling for forgiveness, and steadfastly refusing to eliminate his presence is nothing short of repugnant. A literal pedophile was allowed to remain friends with his colleagues because “forgiveness is always best”. By this logic why wouldn’t the MLP community forgive Neo-Nazis? Why bother to eliminate violently transphobic, racist, bullies when forgiveness is the only answer?
Cold Critical 
